Summary
Contents
Subject index
Why and how do contemporary questions of culture so readily become highly charged questions of identity? The question of cultural identity lies at the heart of current debates in cultural studies and social theory. At issue is whether those identities which defined the social and cultural world of modern societies for so long - distinctive identities of gender, sexuality, race, class and nationality - are in decline, giving rise to new forms of identification and fragmenting the modern individual as a unified subject. Questions of Cultural Identity offers a wide-ranging exploration of this issue. Stuart Hall firstly outlines the reasons why the question of identity is so compelling and yet so problematic. The cast of
Enabling Identity?: Biology, Choice and the New Reproductive Technologies
Enabling Identity?: Biology, Choice and the New Reproductive Technologies
Whether primacy is given to social ties or biological ones, it seems that the late twentieth century affords new possibilities for people who wish to be certain about how and why they are related. This is true both of legal redress (what the courts are prepared to countenance) and of technological intervention in the reproductive process. As possibilities, these instruments and techniques exist in a cultural environment of empowerment or enablement. If, then, one were to ask what might be new and what might be old in such pursuits of identity, one would have to consider what is being enabled. One would also have to consider the value ...
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